New Construction + Full-Service Furnishings · Westfield, New Jersey
Shadowlawn Drive: A Design/Build Team's Own Custom Home in Westfield, NJ
A Westfield custom new-construction home built and designed from the ground up — by the husband-and-wife team who then moved into it.
A Westfield, New Jersey custom new-construction home, built and designed from the ground up by Michael Robert Construction and Ellie Mroz Design. It is also the house the two of us live in, which makes it the least guarded project on this site.
Mike and Ellie are lifelong Westfield residents — they grew up here, met in high school, married, started a family and then started a design/build business here. When a 1950s center-hall colonial came up for sale next door, it was a full knockdown and a blank slate. The brief we gave ourselves was the one clients rarely give: build a house that is not cookie-cutter, and do all the things clients are nervous to do on their own.
Mike drew it. He calls the result clean, California, timeless, and admits no single adjective covers it. Ellie’s version is that it is hard to label but very approachable. When someone wants to see how distinct the work is, this is the house we bring them to.
Project Snapshot
- Location
- Westfield, New Jersey
- Project Type
- Custom new construction, designed and built from the ground up
- Construction
- Michael Robert Construction
- Interior Design / Furnishings
- Ellie Mroz Design
- Signature Elements
- Two-sided porch-and-living-room fireplace, floating center staircase, on-site plaster-finish hood, natural cedar cladding, marble kitchen counter
- Rooms
- Front porch, entry foyer, living room, kitchen, family room, bar and entertaining room, primary suite, bedrooms, baths, laundry, basement gaming and theater rooms, back deck, pool and pergola
- Press
- New Jersey Monthly, July 2021
The porch is a room
The front porch does more work than a porch usually does. Hanging chairs make it somewhere to sit rather than somewhere to pass through, and the fireplace is two-sided: one face warms the porch, the other makes the living room cozy.
That living room is deliberately small in company. There are only two chairs. It is where we sit and unwind every night, and it is an adults-only room by design rather than by accident.
A dining room that became a bar
On the far side of the center staircase is a room that was briefly a dining room. We were not using it, so it became a bar and entertaining room instead — navy cabinetry and a wine wall, and now one of the rooms the house is known for.
That is the advantage of designing for yourself: you can admit a room is not working and change what it is for. Most clients discover the same thing a year in, which is a good argument for planning the whole floor around how a household actually behaves rather than around the labels rooms usually carry.
The kitchen, and the island we shrank
Custom cabinets in a slightly off-white, and a dining and prep island that is smaller than the one originally drawn. We shrank it for a bit more open space, because this is where everyone ends up. The hood is wood with a plaster finish, built on site.
The counter is Calacatta marble, which was the splurge: it had to be very clean and very luxurious. Marble is a notoriously precious material and this one is not treated preciously. You can see water marks on it, and that is fine. It is a living finish, and the marks are patina rather than damage.
Lighting over the island is tube-shaped spots rather than a hanging fixture. It is a surprising choice, and that is generally where the real style goes in.
Walls, on purpose: why it is not an open plan
The main floor reads open, but it is not an open plan and that was the point. Our old house was entirely open. Here we wanted walls and separation, a decision that turned out better than we could have known during a year of everyone being home at once.
The family room off the kitchen takes an oversized, sink-into sectional and is the room the boys claimed immediately. Downstairs there is a gaming room and a theater room, which absorb the noise the main floor no longer has to.
Materials chosen to wear
Everything is natural and the look is lived-in. Flooring is quartersawn white oak in a low sheen. The exterior is clad in natural cedar. We want it to not look new — that is the whole material strategy in one sentence.
The one integrated splurge on Mike’s side was a whole-house sound, light and drape system. He hits the button for morning and it turns on the lights, opens the drapes and plays the music. It cut into the furnishings budget, and it earned its place.
More from this home
Building new in Westfield or a town near it? This is the house we show people who want to see how far the work can go when nobody is holding back.
start a projectBuilt With
Michael Robert Construction
Design and construction on this project were coordinated together — architecture, site work and finish carpentry alongside the selections and furnishings.
See the construction side at Michael Robert ConstructionQuestions
Questions we get a lot
Whose house is this?
It is the home of Ellie Mroz and Mike Mroz — Ellie Mroz Design and Michael Robert Construction — built and designed by them from the ground up in Westfield, New Jersey, on the site of a 1950s colonial that came down. New Jersey Monthly featured it in July 2021.
Is the main floor an open plan?
No, deliberately. It reads open but it has walls and separation. The previous house was entirely open plan, and the decision to break this one into rooms proved its worth when the whole household was home at once.
Why marble in a kitchen with children in it?
Because it is treated as a living finish. Marble marks, and those marks are patina rather than damage. If that idea makes you uneasy, quartzite gives a similar look without the etching — but the marble here was a deliberate splurge and it has aged the way it was expected to.
What does a design/build team do differently on their own house?
All the things clients are nervous to try. A two-sided fireplace between the porch and the living room, a dining room turned into a bar when it went unused, an island shrunk from the drawing for more open floor, and spot lighting where a pendant would be expected.